First Three Days in New Zealand!

Arrival and Day 1 in New Zealand:

Flight over was cool watched rise of the planet of the apes. The flight was emotional at first but I got over it. Flying in during sunset was really cool, the clouds were very yellow. We missed the stop near our hostel but oh well we walked a little bit. There isn an interesting feel to the city but I can’t quite figure it out. It might be from how cold it is. About mid 60s. walked down the main street, queen street. Or it seemed like the main seat anyway, down to the wharf and just looked around. Gto some pictures of some cool buildings. Got back to the hostel and went right to bed. There was a little fiasco with two of the roommates, one guy was put in our room but was supposed to be in another. But sure enough one bed hadn’t been “used” yet and he climbed in. but the guy who originally claimed the bed hadn’t been around and came in at 3am and they were arguing about whose bed it was. The front desk made a mistake by putting the one kid in the wrong room. I don’t care that they argued a bit, but it pissed me off when the turned the fucking lights on. Whatever I guess. Got up early and went down to catch the bus to paihia. Was a very scenic drive and was bout 3 ½ to 4 hours. Walked around paihia and do the haruru falls. That was cool. I am enjoying this place a lot. The flora is very different. It’s almost like another world. I love it

Well. The night certainly turned interesting. Brandon and I headed back to the hostel and showered then went and got food. On our way back I turn onto Kings Rd and IMMEDIATELY I look across the street and see someone walking. This someone looks verrrrry familiar. He looks like Patrick Vandivver. Sure enough I can’t look away, I even told Brandon it looks like him. He was also staring at me. Eventually I just stopped and was like “WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE,” because sure enough it was him. It was the strangest thing to run into Pat, Tim, Tom, Harlan, Mary, and Shane. They were headed to the bottleshop and we hung around with them and it was also Shane’s bday so celebrated that with him. The night was a lot of fun with a lot of good laughs, other than the fact that we couldn’t find Nick, he got off on King’s Rd rather than in the middle of town. What made it worse was that we didn’t really communicate where we were staying, he thought the YHA in town, but it wasn’t. So we searched and gave up eventually because we didn’t know what else to do (even called the YHA in Auckland). We just hoped that he would show up in the morning….haha….

Day 2

We decided to get up early and see the sunrise since we had to leave at about 7:30am for the Cape Reinga day tour. It was the most beautiful sunrise I have ever seen. The Bay of Islands put on quite a show. There was a little cloud over just above the horizon and the sun crept up over some huge hills. And it was just the most golden color I have ever seen. Whoever reads this will need to look at my pictures for sure. While watching the sunrise (went and got Tom) we saw Nick! It was a relief to see him. There was a miscommunication about the hostel we were staying at and he went to the YHA instead. And he also got off at King St. rather than in the little downtown area where Brandon and I stayed. I did feel really bad about the whole thing. After that we got on the “Dune Rider” for our day trip. First off, this thing was a badass bus. It’s like no bus you could imagine. I will have a picture of that as well. The countryside along the way was a lot of fun as well. We also learned a bit about the kaori trees. It is all pretty interesting honestly. But boring for a blog.

We got up to Cape Reinga where the Tasman Sea meets the Pacific Ocean, and you can actually see a division! It was so cool. The view from up top was amazing and we had a clear day so you can only imagine. There is an awesome legend about the place that I will try and find and put on the blog, hopefully I will actually get off my lazy ass and do it.

We went to a sand dune to go sandboarding. It was…you guessed it….awesome. It was maybe about half the size of towerhill in Michigan. It was still a fucking hike up that thing. Went up it three times and my god, by the middle of the third one my legs hurt sooooo bad. I decided to run up that time and that was just a bad idea. Sandboarding was a lot of fun though, you ended up going pretty fast and the sand was flying up behind you. One the third run I tried to make it a good one. It’s pretty ironic I had a good feeling about that one. On my way down I picked up speed, I also began to turn sideways. I tried to turn myself around but to no avail. As I kept the speed up and turned more to the side…I saw a little bump coming up. You can imagine what happened next. I totally beefed it. The best fucking wipeout ever. I remember rolling on my side and flipping and also standing up for a second but I was going so fast I just fell again. Sand was EVERYWHERE. I could hear people saying “Ohhhhhhhh” at the bottom of the hill. I did open my eyes for a second what I “stood up” and I just saw sand everywhere and a blue sky for a split second before I saw more sand and closed my eyes. It was a fucking tumble.  I bet it was the coolest wipeout ever. I wish I could have seen it from everyone.

After that we traveled down the Ninety-Mile Beach. It is actually an official route where all the rules of the road apply! That’s pretty fucking sweet. It’s actually only 64 miles long. We stopped for a little bit to take some pictures and then headed on our way to the famous Mangonui Fish shop. Holy shit, best fish and chips I have ever had. No lie. It was on a beautiful bay, the sun was low in the sky, the fish was cooked perfect, it tasted great and I bought a beer that had a hint of lemon to go with it. It was a perfect way to end the day. I can’t wait to share a picture of that. I really did fall in love with the upper part of the north island. It’s ungodly beautiful.

After that I got totally plastered. We went to the bottle shop and bought a 12pack of Becks. It was actually pretty good, I liked it. I drank 5 and Brandon had 4. I was pretty tipsy and all about drinking more (wasn’t a good idea). I wanted to go buy more but we decided we would just go to the bar. The bar was TINY, but then again town itself isn’t very big. It was happy hour and all beer was only $4.50 for a pint! The happy hour ended in five minutes so….I bought two. I got Tui’s. Which I think may be my favorite beer now. Wish I could find it in the states. Anyway. We were all having a good time talking and what not and I ended up getting two more pints of Tui’s. The bartender was awesome. Since happyhour was over I asked her what the cheapest beer is. I am not sure what it was because she said she would give me more Tui’s for only 6 bucks when originally I think it was $7.50. So I was all sorts of excited getting the beer discounted! Let’s recap. I weight about 130lbs. I drank 5 bottle and 4 pints of beer. I started to black out by the end of the night. I don’t exactly remember everything. Apparently when walking outside a security guard asked us to keep it down, twice. I don’t remember this at all. I do remember making out with a girl from Minnesota, I don’t know how I managed to hook up with a girl. I also remember throwing up in our hostels flowerbox….I also remember tripping and falling face first on concrete (or something VERY hard) and my nose started to bleed. It’s weird though, it almost seems like that was a dream because it is so fuzzy and I can’t quite put it together…oh well. I DON’T remember going to bed….and I woke up very dizzy. So it was quite an interesting night for me in quaint little Paihia.

I definitely hit my face on something hard the night I drank a lot…my nose is sore the next day. It’s weird though since I have NO scratches today. Nothing at all.

Day 3

Wednesday….We had the tour of the Bay of Islands at 9am and I was so fucking dizzy and felt like shit when I woke up. I guess that is what I get for drinking so oh well. We got onto the boat and thankfully I didn’t get sea sick or anything. We had a clear sky nearly the entire time and it was so nice out there. I can’t believe a place like that exists. We went around the bay and every which was and new island was just as spectacular as the last one. We went to the end of the bay where the Hole in the Rock is. It’s a big arch in a rock and it is SWEET. It was actually huge too. Stayed around there then we went off to a little place to dock and walked around an island for about 45 minutes. First off, the water here is so crystal clear and blue. I couldn’t get over it when we docked. I was just baffled. I walked up to a look-out point on this island, and what was on the other side took my breath away and took chills down my back. What was on the other side is the picture I posted on Facebook on my wall. I only had about 10 minutes to look at it. It sucked. I wanted to stay there all day. Eventually I got back on the boat and we got back to Paihia and we hung out with the Canadians and the girl from Minnesota till it was our time to leave. Then we got on the bus and went back to Auckland. It was really sad leaving such a beautiful place. I am pretty pissed I only have a week here. And it was already Wednesday night…

The End of the Year...

The last full weekend we had was pretty eventful I would say. I certainly enjoyed it. And the story goes like this...

     We started out by going diving on Friday at 10:45 am and it was of course...awesome! Here is a list of some of the things we saw : A beautiful loggerhead turtle, a couple lionfish, HUGE puffer fish, another leopard shark, there were a TON of wobbegongs out there, TWO MANTA RAYS, a stone fish, porcupine fish, some big cleaner shrimp, seastars, AND on the way back to shore we went somewhat around the point and we got to see some dolphins in the water! It was great to see that on my last dive, even though we didn't see any grey nurse sharks. Oh well. After that we went to the Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary and did a rope course that had ziplines and that was a lot of fun (I will elaborate later, just trying to finish this). After that we headed into Murwillumbah to get dinner and then headed to the camp site near Mt. Warning. It was a lot of fun camping outside but it was very wet. Woke up at 2:30am to head out and I was barely tired, it was probably all the adrenaline of hiking up a mountain keeping me up. Along the way we say an awesome leaf-tailed gecko and there were a lot of glow in the dark fungi again! This time is was small dots rather than mushrooms. We made it to the top and unfortunately it was cloudy the entire time. We made it up in about an hour and ten minutes so we had a lot of time to kill before "sunrise." We made our way down and I ended up walking by myself and it was actually kinda nice! just to listen to nature and all that shit. At one point at a lookout sorta area (I think it was actually for helicopters) The clouds opened up and there was sun and I could see the ocean. It was beautiful. Eventually I got down, everyone else did and we took an unexpected stop to Nimbin. Yeah not many were very happy about that. But oh well it is what it is. And that was my awesome weekend from what I can remember!

     On Wednesday we took a field trip for wildlife bio. We went up to the Border Ranges National Park and it was...of course...awesome. There were leeches everywhereeee it was crazy. Never had one before and they actually fascinated me. We saw some beautiful scenery, the rainforest was so cool (and wet), saw an ancient tree called the Antarctic Tree estimated to be about 10,000 years old. They are so old they have "forgotten" how to reproduce with seeds. So however many are left, that's it. We just toured around the area and not really a whole lot of interesting things happened. Harland and Tom decided to touch the stinging tree, so that was pretty funny. OH before we got there we went to Nimbin, basically to get lunch and to..buy other things (obviously not a part of the itinerary to buy other things though). Nimbin is a..lets say...alternative lifestyle living. It was certainly an interesting town, I could never live there. And that is about  it that has happened.

     OH we also had an end of the year cookout with the professors on Friday, we had TONS of food, good dessert and an all around good time. We had a mini-tri in the morning and relays and volleyball in the afternoon as well. It was a lot of fun.

     Now we are in the Brisbane airport and it sucks so bad. It was difficult to keep it together at some points, especially when I really thought about the fact that I am leaving. We were on the beach one last time and saw the sunrise. Leaving that was hard, that was the worst thus far. But once on that plane and in the air....I think that will be the worst of it all. It's all hitting me that I am leaving this country. Next time I am online I will be in America. Would rather be visiting South Bend and coming home to Australia at some point...
   

It's getting close...

     FINALLY! I am updating my blog. Nothing has really happened too much. Just the normal everyday life living on the beach here in Australia. We did go on a field trip for the wildlife biology class which was way more fun than I expected. I guess I will end up talking a little bit about that and what is in store for the next few weeks.

   On Tuesday the 2nd Harland and I went up to Byron Bay to get his didgeridoo and just look around and spend the day there. No where really opened until 10am and we got there about 8:30am so we headed down to the beach and relaxed down there, I decided to jump in the water and it felt great. Eventually we went up to Planet Corroboree to check out the didgeridoos. He wanted one with an A key. There were a couple to choose from, the one he originally saw that he really liked, and another that was much larger. He played them and eventually he decided on the new one he saw today. It had a much cleaner sound. We left the shop to come back and we went and got some lunch, looking in some stores, and then we headed over to a bar and sat down for some beers. First beer was a good ole pint of some Toohey's Old and it hit the spot. We watched a bit of the UK KU game and I got another beer, the Stone & Wood Pacific Ale. Holy shit. I love beer now. Real beer, not that shit we have in the states. Flavorful beer with something actually in it. This beer had a fruity smell and when drank was had a piney flavor, but a little something more that we just couldn't figure out. Here is Stone & Wood's website.

     So, from Wednesday until Friday afternoon we went down to Woody Head (everyone laugh...ha ha) near Iluka, NSW. It is situated on the Bunjalong National Park and is a camping ground area. It was in a beautiful location. We were set up with nice cabin style things. The goal of this field trip was to catch microbats and take a look at them and ID them, catch some small mamals in traps that we learned how to set and make the bait. We also had to find 20 forest birds and 20 seabirds, give the presentation over our selected topic
   
     We got there and the first order of business was to make the bait for the traps we were going to be setting. It was a mixture of oats, peanut butter, and honey. Was pretty funny to watch Tom, Jami, and Lora mix it, as always with us, it was all jokes. We the proceeded to go and place traps. 25 traps 10 meters back from the road and ~10 meters apart. Setting the traps was actually pretty fun. It was easy, but let me be the first to tell you that I never thought I would be walking through a forest in Australia with no path (it gets worse later). We get all 25 traps set then we are told about our bird assignment and then are given free time until dinner. Harlan and I go and try to knock out some of our bird list, got a good amount and we ended up finding an awesome open area just behind the cabin thing and stayed there for a good chunk of time and found some awesome birds (and a few leeches). We ate a very good dinner prepared by one of the guys that works at the camp and had some of the presentations that night. After that was all said and done we all got ready to go spotlighting.  We headed out at around 9 I would say?...maybe a little bit later. Regardless, we went out with these BRIGHT ASS lights, you had carry a batterypack in a backpack that was heavy as shit. There weren't enough for everyone, so I didn't take one (just had a regular flashlight). Surprisingly enough everyone was silent while looking for animals. I was shocked. That doesn't usually happen with us. Unfortunately the night was uneventful. The only thing we saw was a ring tailed possum, glow in the dark fungi (totally awesome), and another possum I believe. We decided that we were going to walk down a path to the beach and walk that home. Talk about the best choice ever. The moon was very bright that night (was getting close to a full moon) and The beach was well lit and because of the rocky shore's geography, the waves were HUGE. The rocky shore essentially just abruptly ended and the waves would crash so hard into the rocks. There was one spot that was especially tumultuous, we sat down, got a good view, and watched the show. And a show it was. The waves would crash probably 30 feet high, and as it crashed it sounded like thunder. It was amazing. An experience I won't soon forget. Brandon and I decided to get a closer look. I took a battery pack and would light up the waves. It was awesome. OH I almost forgot. Woody Head provided one of the most beautiful sunsets I have seen. So, that was the first day.
     Oh we also met this German immigrant that was working at the camp as a release sorta program from jail. He was actually a pretty nice guy, a little redneck, but he meant well. He was in jail for 6 years but Harlan and I weren't going to ask him for what. He also gave us a free beer! So that was awesome.

     Thursday began by waking up at about 6:15am to go and check the animal traps. Unfortunately we only caught one animal, a bush rat. Wasn't very exciting. We then headed back to the cabin for breakfast. After that we had....free time! It was awesome. We decided to go and do some more birds and just look around the campground a bit. Ryan joined us and we weren't spotting very many so we walked up into the forest from a large sand dune covered in foliage. From there we walked quite a distance and higher than the trees. We walked through the brush, you know where snakes live (mind you deadly snakes) and made our own path to the beach. Needless to say....we didn't see too many birds but it was a lot of fun. We were back where the waves crashed very hard into the rocks. We stripped to our underwear and went up near where the waves crashed and being that close....was incredible. The ocean is a monster, one beautiful fucking monster. We actually got a little too close and Harlan braced himself and got swept back a bit and cut his foot pretty good and a couple other scrapes. We headed back to our clothes and about 10 seconds after and even larger wave crashed over the spot all three of us were at, all of us would have definitely gotten hurt. Oh, all of this was before noon as well. We headed to the kiosk and got bandaids for Harlan and met up with everyone else. We then just chilled the rest of the afternoon then met back for dinner, did more presentations (mine was this night) and then most people went and got beer. I started to feel a little ill so I was in bed by 10pm, I was tired anyway.
     Friday was about the same, woke up to check the traps and collect them and we also looked at the bats that were caught the last two nights. There were some really cool ones in there. One had HUGE ears. They all had mites that were running all over them, was very weird. After that we had to clean up our rooms and then just waited for the bus to get here. We also finished up our birdlist. Woody Head was one of the best field trips I had been on, and not because of the free time. We learned a lot of birds in the area, like the Eastern Whipbird with its distinctive call.

     This field trip was so awesome. The sights were amazing and it was one of the best we have been on. The last field trip we are gonna take is the, and I quote, "magical mystery tour." We are going to the Border Ranges National Park and, work on the street is, Nimbin as well. So it'll be a lot of fun. That is all for now! OH this weekend I am diving again and will be climbing (hopefully for real this time) Mt. Warning! So should have a good blog about that and I wanna blog about my everyday life here.

Monday, 26/3/2012

Well today was pretty uneventful for one thing...


I FOUND A BABY OCTOPUS. Now, that sounds cool and all but it is pretty rare to find an octopus at all! (and to think I saw three while doing my intro dives to get certified). It was so cool. I looked down at some rocks in the water and saw a cool shell and decided to pick it up. There was some pull to it and it didnt want to leave the rock so I figured it  still was alive. So I pulled harder and sure enough it came loose, expecting to find a snail. But sure enough I found a broken shell, sand, and this little pale pink/white looking mass. Sure enough on harder examination it had extremely small tentacles. I was in shock it was an octopus. I got it out of the shell (he wasn't really "in" it anyway) and let him crawl around on my hand and fingers. He was smaller than the top portion of my index finger. It was so cool to old such a small creature, and an octopus at that. I bathed him in seawater to make sure nothing happened to him. Eventually he was sitting with his beak on my finger and actually began to bite me haha. It was an odd feeling, a very faint pinching (considering his beak was probably 1/10 of a millimeter). Time came to let him go so I put him back in the shell I found him in and back into the water her went where I picked it up. It was so awesome. I am pissed I didn't take my camera.

Spring Break

This is Matt Schmalzel's interpretation of how I would describe my spring break: "Beer, beer,beer,beer, tits, dancing, THE GREAT BARRIER REEF WAS FUCKING AWESOME, beer, beer, tits, beer"

In all actuality, that is pretty accurate. Spring break was a lot of fun. I will start with where I left off from Sydney...

     So we stayed the night at the Maccas and blah blah blah it was boring. We eventually got to the plane and boarded and I will be the first to tell you...Jetstar is many times more uncomfortable than Air New Zealand. That is beside the point. I didn't sleep at all (nor the night before in Maccas) and actually talked to the woman next to me. She was under the impression that America is a very dangerous place and that chances are you will eventually get shot because everyone has a gun, because that's what the movies show. I was a little shocked she believed the movies, but she is also afraid of flying and made it worse by watching airplane investigations of crashes that have happened. All in all I enjoyed talking to her. Made my trip interesting. So we get to Cairns and it is very rainy and that isn't fun at all.

     OH before I forget, while in Maccas and going to Gilligane (our AWESOME hostel) we met this German kid. He was pretty cool and ended up hanging out with us the entire trip and became pretty good friends with. So ended up hanging out with him while we waited to check into our hostel....we arrived at 8am and we can't check in until 2pm. It was greaaaat. I was exhausted but we found things to do. Eventually we settled down in a skydiving place and watched jackass for about 3 hours I would say and they were cool with it. Checked in, took a nap, talked, hung out, got dinner and then we went down to the club for a beer.

     Low and behold to our surprise it was JELLO WRESTLING NIGHT. We were stoked but didn't plan on staying for it. Before the store continues: My plan was to be back in the room at 10-1030pm and have one beer, what really happened: I went to bed at 1am and had 6-7 beers. How? You ask? Could my plans go so astray? Let me tell you. We get down there and everyone is having fun talking and the club is a lot more fun than we thought, loud, good music and eventually two woman come over and ask the girls with us if they want to participate in the jello wrestling. And you better believe we were making sure the girls we were with did it. After about 20 minutes of persuasion two of them (I won't give names) finally signed up!! We were so excited, bought beer, and prepared for an exciting night! We waited, drank and waited a bit more for it to start and eventually the spectacle of night was upon us! we made sure we were right in front to cheer them on. There were I think 6 girls total in the match. One from Sweden, Britain, another from America and then our girls. We cheered loudly for our two Americans. Unfortunately one of the girls lost her first round but the other girl MADE IT TO THE CHAMPIONSHIP. You better believe we were excited as hell. She actually ended up winning the entire thing! It was a great night. In the end they had everyone in the jello looking for a bar of soap to win a prize, here is the catch, they said the girls could do it topless if they wanted, thank you girl from the UK, mind you this was my birthday (real one) and so that means it was the 2nd time celebrating.

      After a great night we pack up and head to out to make 11 dives on the Great Barrier Reef for 3 days and 2 nights. We were picked up at 745am and we made it out to our transport boat where we did two dives. I was pretty nervous, just didn't know what to expect, I have never dove without an instructor with me so my buddy and I were totally free to do whatever we like. We actually use wetsuits that only go down to just above the knees, so I expected the water will be very warm, and warm it was. The first two dives were great, didn't see anything spectacular, other than the insane amount of colourful fish, the corals, just the experience was absolutely awesome. I will give a quick description of what happened over the 3 days. Things I saw - TONS of fish, colourful, weird, all sorts of stuff. Nemo, a barracuda, 3 turtles (pet one), cleaner shirmp (gave me a manicure), very small crustaceans (on night dive), porcupine fish, unicornfish, cowfish, triggerfish, sea cucumber. I don't think I will see anything more beautiful. Can't believe it is over now but it was absolutely spectacular. The night dives were a lot of fun and sorta creepy. If you turned out the lights and it was pitch black (the feeling of pitch black underwater is like nothing else) and wave your hand in the water then bioluminescent plankton show up, so a very cool but brief light show. One more little story, during our 2nd night dive I cut my ankle on some coral and was bleeding, and sure enough a white tipped reef shark came a little closer than usual to check me out, I like to say that I was almost shark food, that is pretty exciting. I can elaborate more but ask in person, don't want to make this post too long.

     Eventually our dives on the Great Barrier Reef were over :( it was a very sad day. It was go go go the entire time so we were always doing something, or though it seemed. It was sad leaving the reef, we all got a lot better at diving after it was all done, definitely addicted. We are back on land, I am getting land sickness for SURE and you know what that means? Time to go to the club and get drunk and we sure as hell did. For a third time we celebrated my birthday. At one point in the night I had a beer in one hand and three full ones lined up to be drank, not to mention the many others that were bought for me that night and a rum and coke. It was a good as night. The club was a lot of fun, good ass music, lots of dancing and everyone was pretty friendly. Meta kid that was on the boat diving with us and hung out with him for a bit and was all around a great time.

     Saturday was AWESOME. Eight of us decided to rent a vehicle and travel into the country a bit and see the waterfalls. After a very delayed start we finally got on the road in the most bad ass SUV I have been in. It was some Toyota, a big Toyota, a fucking diesel Toyota and it was so much freaking fun to drive. Yep, I drove on the opposite side of the road and it was SWEEEEET. The water falls were amazing. The second one we swan around behind it and swam underneath it. Its incredible to be behind a waterfall and looking up, and swimming under one. Oh but the water was probably the coldest water I have ever swam in but I certainly don't regret it.

    Saturday was St. Pattys day so you know we went out and drank once again. Australia has taught me to LOVE beer, I don't think I will drink hard liquor very often when I get back to the states, and totally okay with that. Saturday night was just like any other. Great music, dancing, meeting people and making friends. I am going to miss Cairns, Gilligans, and the Great Barrier Reef. It was definitely a spring break that will be unmatched. I had the time of my life, with some of the best people I have ever met.